How to survive the media jungle

How to survive the media jungle

1/4

Going, going... tieless Tim Davie on Sky on Monday night failing to look in the camera...

sky

2/4

...gone: Tim Davie makes his escape

sky

3/4

Open mic: Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has just fallen victim on Radio 4 today

Reuters

4/4

You’re toast: John Humphrys grills George Entwistle last Saturday morning

bbc

They should have a little more media savvy but even the world’s biggest broadcaster and its most experienced pundits have shown they could take advice about how to deal with cameras, studios and microphones.

The latest incident in a series of events that underline the need for some astute media coaching was the live mic “Iran” gaffe by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning.

He quickly tried to deflect the mistake but the Twittersphere was already abuzz with the Corporation’s latest PR disaster.

It highlighted once again the media pitfalls that can sabotage the best of intentions in our technological world of 24 hour news feeds and twitter.

Last Saturday morning, the then director-general George Entwistle performed so badly on Radio 4’s Today programme that he reportedly considered resigning straight after the interview. “No one listening can have been in any doubt that this interview was historic,” wrote one radio critic, referring both to the lethargy in Entwistle’s delivery and his startling inability to answer the key question from the programme’s attack dog, John Humphrys, about his knowledge of Newsnight’s fateful report on child abuse in North Wales.

By Monday, the BBC’s top brass had demonstrated their ability to botch key interviews in more than one medium. Speaking to Dermot Murnaghan on Sky News, Entwistle’s successor, Tim Davie, gave a shambolic performance. “Simply bewilderingly bad” was how a former BBC executive described it to the Standard, and particularly surprising given Davie’s background running PepsiCo’s marketing.

So as the BBC prepares for another week of scrutiny, what were the lessons of Davie’s live car crash? And what should the Corporation’s spinners be teaching their execs and interview vets before they appear on camera again?

Look down the barrel

Long before his walk-out fiasco, Davie started by committing the deadly interview sin of not looking down the barrel of the camera. Then he carried on committing it so frequently that one might wonder whether he knew where the camera was. When Murnaghan asked him a question about whether the Newsnight mistake was his predecessor’s fault, Davie gazed off camera at his PR handler for agonising seconds before turning to answer.

“There is no excuse,” says Gavin Megaw, a media training specialist at Hanover Communications, who has briefed several Tory high-ups and countless CEOs on performing in front of camera. “During a down-the-line interview you have to look intently at the camera because that is where the audience are.” Davie’s mistake made him look shifty and unhappy to be there: worse, the handler he was looking at was visible in the reflection on the glass behind him. The spinner — the BBC’s £154,000-a-year director of communications Paul Mylrea — was giving his charge hand signals and walked off at one point, only to return.

“When I was at the Tory party,” says Megaw, “if a handler could be seen in an interview they had to buy cake for the whole office.”

Don’t walk off

Davie’s pièce de résistance was his exit — cementing the interview’s status as a must-watch for millions. Looking even more distracted than before, Davie said: “Anyway, I will go now … I’ve got a job and I’m gonna get on with it, thank you, Dermot.” He then took a tentative stride to his right, still looking between the camera and his handler, before delaying, saying “Thank you”, then finally walking out of shot.

“If he had signalled that he had to go and that it was the last question, it would have been okay,” says Megaw, “but what he did made him look like he wasn’t in control. He looked like he was blocking, and you always want to look as if you are facilitating.”

Down-the-line interviews present a particular problem for PR handlers — they can’t communicate with the journalist or anchor back in the studio.

A BBC spokesman told the Standard the interview had overrun, causing a delay to other broadcasters who were due to follow, and that “what can be seen on camera is Mr Davie’s attempt to move on to the next interview as quickly as possible once he believed the previous one had finished”.

Don’t dress down

If Davie was trying to communicate his youth and freshness by leaving his tie at home, it didn’t work. The backlash began immediately. “Tim Davie live on Sky News WITHOUT A TIE,” tweeted one political hack — “so David Cameron circa 2005. Cross him off the list.” By Wednesday, the matter had reached the comment pages of a national daily. Later that day Davie had buttoned up his collar and was sporting a navy blue number, having received a letter from a member of the public advising him that “you will not be taken seriously without a tie”.

“No matter what he said or what his style is, I would have put a tie on him in his first big interview discussing the crisis in the BBC,” says Megaw. The Standard understands from BBC sources that the acting DG will be wearing a tie in future TV interviews.

Don’t wear a perma-smile

It wouldn’t have been picked up on had the rest of the interview not resembled a scene from The Thick of It, but the awkward smile Davie had on his face from start to finish was an additional issue that his briefers will want to correct. Echoing a trait made famous by Gordon Brown, Davie grinned oddly while answering serious questions about why his organisation had accused an innocent man of being a paedophile.

FIVE OF THE WORST

Chloe Smith The encounter between Smith, then a junior minister at the Treasury, and Newsnight’s Jeremy Paxman, over the Government’s fuel tax U-turn in June was more one-sided than a 3rd round FA Cup tie.

Ed MilibandIf some regard you as robotic, don’t give an interview in which you repeat the same wording about a strike over and over. Miliband did in a BBC interview in June last year.

Chris Grayling Asked at the 2009 Tory conference about plans for General Dannatt to be a defence minister, Chris Grayling called it a “political gimmick”. No one had told him the appointment was his own party’s idea.

Michael Howard“Did you threaten to overrule him?” went into the political lexicon after Paxman asked the then Home Secretary Howard the same question about his dealings with the then head of the Prison Service an amazing 12 times.

John Bercow The Commons Speaker was elected against the wishes of most of his fellow Tories in 2009, but when ITV’s political editor Tom Bradby put that fact to him, Bercow snapped at him and told him he had run out of time.